Mission

to provide news and information about women's lives
and feminist activism;

to educate the public about the status of women
around the world;

to serve as a forum for feminist ideas and theory;

to be an information resource on feminist, women's,
and lesbian culture;

and to seek social justice and equality for women
worldwide.

Statement from the
First Issue of off our backs

Volume 1, Issue 1, February 1970

Nowadays there is again a movement of women gaining
strength and momentum as we become united in the knowledge of our common
oppression and our commitment to struggle for liberation. Fifty years
after we have won the right to vote we still do not have equal wages for
equal work. We remain enslaved in myths of female inferiority, our lives
limited to the home and children, often in poverty and isolation. We are
considered only temporary workers and channeled into secondary and low-paying
jobs. We do not have control over our own bodies, our own reproduction.
Through the sexual revolution we have been cast in the role
of sexual object, pleasure machines to be victimized by unsafe and unresearched
birth control.

off our backs is a paper for all women who are
fighting for the liberation of their lives and we hope it will grow and
expand to meet the needs of women from all backgrounds and classes. In
order to succeed we need you to use this paper to relate what you are
doing and what you are thinking, for we are convinced that a woman speaking
from the agony of her own struggle has a voice that can touch the experience
of all women.

The name off our backs was chosen because it reflects
our understanding of the dual nature of the womens movement. Women
need to be free of mens domination to find their real identities,
redefine their lives, and fight for the creation of a society in which
they can lead decent lives as human beings. At the same time, women must
become aware that there would be no oppressor without the oppressed, that
we carry the responsibility for withdrawing the consent to be oppressed.
We must strive to get off our backs, and with the help of our sisters
to oppose and destroy that system which fortifies the supremacy of men
while exploiting the mass for the profit of the few. Our position is not
anti-men but pro-women. We seek through the liberation of women, the liberation
of all peoples.